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Being

Taika David Cohen (born 16 August 1975), known professionally as Taika Waititi ( TY-kə WY-tee-tee), is a New Zealand filmmaker, writer, actor, and comedian. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for two Golden Globe Awards and six Emmy Awards. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2022. His feature films Boy (2010) and Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) have each been the top-grossing film entirely funded and produced within New Zealand. Waititi's 2003 short film Two Cars, One Night earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film. He co-wrote, co-directed and starred in the horror comedy film What We Do in the Shadows (2014) with Jemaine Clement, which was adapted into a television series of the same name in 2019. The series has been nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series. His directing credits include the superhero films Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), as well as the black comedy film Jojo Rabbit (2019), the last of which he also wrote and starred in as an imaginary version of Adolf Hitler. Jojo Rabbit received six Academy Award nominations and won Best Adapted Screenplay. Waititi also earned the Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. In television, Waititi co-created and produced the comedy drama series Reservation Dogs, and directed, produced, and starred in the comedy Our Flag Means Death. In addition to directing an episode of the series The Mandalorian, he voiced the character IG-11, for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance.

Land

North Africa, also known as Northern Africa, is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt and Sudan's Red Sea coast in the east. The most common definition for the region's boundaries includes Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Western Sahara, the territory disputed between Morocco and the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The United Nations’ definition includes all these countries as well as Sudan. The African Union defines the region similarly, only differing from the UN in excluding the Sudan and including Mauritania. The Sahel, south of the Sahara Desert, can be considered as the southern boundary of North Africa. North Africa includes the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, and the plazas de soberanía. It can also be considered to include Malta, as well as other Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish regions such as Lampedusa and Lampione, Madeira, and the Canary Islands, which are all either closer to the African continent than Europe or as close to the African continent as Europe. Northwest Africa has been inhabited by Berbers since the beginning of recorded history, while the eastern part of North Africa has been home to the Ancient Egyptians and Nubians. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula swept across the region during the early Muslim conquests. The Arab migrations to the Maghreb began immediately after, which started a long process of Islamization and Arabization that has altered the demographic breakdown of the region and defined the cultural landscape of North Africa ever since. Many, but not all, Berbers, Egyptians, and Nubians gradually converted to Islam and gradually merged into the Arab-Islamic culture, and today, Arabs constitute the majority of the population in all North African countries. The countries and people of North Africa share a large amount of their genetic, ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity and influence with the Middle East/West Asia, East Africa and the Sahara. A process that began with the Neolithic Revolution c. 10,000 BC and pre-dynastic Egypt. The countries of North Africa are also a major part of the Arab world. The Islamic and Arab influence in North Africa has remained dominant ever since, with the region being integral in the Muslim world. North Africa is associated with the Middle East in the realm of geopolitics to form the Middle East-North Africa region.

Being

Kim Carnes (; born July 20, 1945) is an American singer and songwriter best known for her 1981 hit single, "Bette Davis Eyes". She embarked on a solo career as a songwriter and performer in the early 1970s and also worked for several years as a session background singer with the Waters Sisters, Maxine Waters Willard and Julia Waters Tillman, who were later featured in the 2013 documentary 20 Feet from Stardom. In 1971, Carnes released her debut album, Rest on Me. Released in 1975, Carnes's self-titled second album included her first charting single, "You're a Part of Me", which reached No. 32 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The following year, Carnes released Sailin', which featured "Love Comes from Unexpected Places". The song won the American Song Festival and the award for Best Composition at the Tokyo Song Festival in 1976. In her breakthrough year, 1980, Carnes and her husband, David Ellingson, were commissioned by Kenny Rogers to co-write the songs for his concept album Gideon. Her duet with Rogers, "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer", hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned the duo a Grammy Award nomination. Later that year, Carnes's cover of Smokey Robinson's "More Love", from her fifth album, Romance Dance, hit No. 10. In 1981, Carnes released Mistaken Identity, which featured the chart-topping "Bette Davis Eyes". A worldwide hit, it became the best-selling single of the year in the United States. "Bette Davis Eyes" spent nine weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, went Gold, and won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and the Song of the Year. Mistaken Identity reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200, was certified Platinum, and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Carnes also had success with the singles "Draw of the Cards", "Crazy in the Night (Barking at Airplanes)", "Make No Mistake, He's Mine" with Barbra Streisand, "What About Me?" featuring Kenny Rogers and James Ingram, and the Grammy Award-nominated singles "Voyeur" and "Invisible Hands". Her successes as a songwriter include co-writing the No. 1 duet "The Heart Won't Lie" with Donna Weiss; it was recorded by Vince Gill and Reba McEntire and was released on McEntire's 1993 album It's Your Call. Carnes also wrote the 1984 pop duet “Make No Mistake, He’s Mine”, which she sang with Barbra Streisand. The song was later reworked into a duet between Ronnie Milsap and Kenny Rogers, reaching #1 on the country charts. Her most recent studio album is Chasin' Wild Trains (2004).

Event

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from its formation in 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve other countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The world's flagship communist state, it was governed by the Communist Party under Marxism–Leninism, through soviet councils. The Soviet economy was also centrally planned. Its capital and largest city was Moscow. The Soviet Union's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917. The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin, established the Russian SFSR, the world's first constitutionally communist state. Following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR and its subordinate republics were merged into the Soviet Union in 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, a six-year power struggle saw Joseph Stalin emerge as the country's undisputed personalist ruler. He initiated rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant growth, but contributed to a devastating famine in the 1930s that killed millions. The Soviet forced labour camp system, known as the Gulag, was expanded. During the late 1930s, Stalin's government conducted the Great Purge to eliminate opposition, resulting in deportations, executions, and the Moscow trials. Failing to build an anti-Nazi coalition in Europe, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. However, in 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest land invasion in history, opening the Eastern Front of World War II. The Soviet Union played a decisive role in defeating the Axis powers as part of the Allies, while extending its sphere of influence to Central and Eastern Europe. With around 27 million casualties, it suffered the most deaths of any country in World War II. In the war's aftermath, the Soviet Union consolidated the territories occupied by the Red Army into satellite states and undertook rapid economic development, cementing its status as a superpower. Geopolitical tensions with the United States led to the Cold War. The US-led Western Bloc coalesced into the NATO military alliance in 1949, prompting the Eastern Bloc to form the Warsaw Pact in 1955. With little direct combat, the blocs engaged in ideological and proxy wars. In 1953, following Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev initiated a campaign of de-Stalinization, which led to ideological tensions with communist China, under Mao Zedong, and culminated in an acrimonious split. The Soviet military suppressed uprisings in East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, while the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis narrowly averted a global conflict. Under Leonid Brezhnev, prosperity shifted toward stagnation, although relations with the US eased. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev sought reform through his policies of glasnost and perestroika. In 1989, most Warsaw Pact countries overthrew their Soviet-backed regimes, effectively ending the Eastern Bloc. Nationalist movements across the Soviet republics declared sovereignty, and in 1991, a successful referendum to establish a renewed federation was followed by a failed coup by hardliners. This prompted Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus to secede. On 26 December, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian SFSR, oversaw its reconstitution into the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union's successor state. All fifteen republics became independent states; all except the Baltic states joined the Commonwealth of Independent States. The post-Soviet states experienced a humanitarian disaster. The Soviet Union was one of the world's two superpowers, with hegemony in Eastern Europe, global diplomacy, ideological influence (particularly in the Global South), military might, economic strength, and scientific and technological accomplishments. Its space program made significant achievements in the Space Race. It had the world's second-largest economy and the largest standing military. As a nuclear state, it wielded the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. As an Allied nation, it was a founding member of the United Nations and one of five permanent members of its Security Council.

Concept

A lichen ( LY-kən, UK also LITCH-ən) is a hybrid colony of algae or cyanobacteria living symbiotically among filaments of multiple fungus species, along with bacteria embedded in the cortex, or "skin", in a mutualistic relationship. Lichens are the lifeform that first brought the term symbiosis (as Symbiotismus) into biological context. Lichens have since been recognized as important actors in nutrient cycling and producers which many higher trophic feeders feed on, such as reindeer, gastropods, nematodes, mites, and springtails. Lichens have properties different from those of their component organisms. They come in many colors, sizes, and forms and are sometimes plant-like, but are not plants. They may have tiny, leafless branches (fruticose) or flat, leaf-like structures (foliose); they may grow crust-like, adhering tightly to a surface (substrate) like a thick coat of paint (crustose), have a powder-like appearance (leprose), or feature other growth forms. A macrolichen is a lichen that is either bush-like or leafy; all other lichens are termed microlichens. Here, "macro" and "micro" do not refer to size, but to the growth form. Common names for lichens may contain the word moss (e.g., "reindeer moss", "Iceland moss"), and lichens may superficially look like and grow with mosses, but they are not closely related to mosses or any plant. Lichens do not have roots that absorb water and nutrients as plants do, but like plants, they produce their own energy by photosynthesis. When they grow on plants, they do not live as parasites, but instead use the plant's surface as a substrate. Lichens occur from sea level to high alpine elevations, in many environmental conditions, and can grow on almost any surface. They are abundant growing on bark, leaves, mosses, or other lichens and hanging from branches "living on thin air" (epiphytes) in rainforests and in temperate woodland. They grow on rock, walls, gravestones, roofs, exposed soil surfaces, rubber, bones, and in the soil as part of biological soil crusts. Various lichens have adapted to survive in some of the most extreme environments on Earth: arctic tundra, hot dry deserts, rocky coasts, and toxic slag heaps. They can even live inside solid rock, growing between the grains (endolithic). There are about 20,000 known species. Some lichens have lost the ability to reproduce sexually yet continue to speciate. They can be seen as being relatively self-contained miniature ecosystems, where the fungi, algae, or cyanobacteria have the potential to engage with other microorganisms in a functioning system that may evolve as an even more complex composite organism. Lichens may be long-lived, with some considered to be among the oldest living things. They are among the first living things to grow on fresh rock exposed after an event such as a landslide. The long life-span and slow and regular growth rate of some species can be used to date events (lichenometry). Lichens are a keystone species in many ecosystems and benefit trees and birds.